Cincinnati fire overtime triples during city budget cuts

Overtime costs for Cincinnati firefighters have shot through the roof in the past year. In fact, it was almost four times higher in 2012 than it was the previous year.

City Manager Milton Dohoney considered it money well spent, and told WLWT News 5 Monday it essentially bought the city some time while it works to increase staffing levels.

Fire department overtime in 2010 was just under $700,000.

In 2011, it dipped to roughly $625,000.

Last year, it was pegged at $2.3 million. Twenty-seven firefighters earned more than ten grand each in overtime.

Why the spike? City and fire command leaders said it relates to attrition and staffing levels. As the city moved through the recession years, recruit classes were scrapped in order to save money. But, retirements and other factors affecting employment levels did not slow, so the city is now at a point where the staffing level needs to be replenished in order to maintain a certain level of fire safety.

The authorized personnel level is 841 but current staffing level is 755. On any given day, there simply aren't enough firefighters to cover the city's 12 ladder companies, 26 engine companies, 12 ambulances and two heavy rescue units. For the past few years, the city has browned out part of the fire companies. Local 48 Union President Matt Alter said the department starts each day at 87.5 percent strength.

Overtime is needed to fill the shifts and keep brownouts to a minimum of five companies per day.

"If we didn't have our overtime," Chief Richard Braun said, "we'd be browning out close to eight to 10 companies, almost a fourth of the fleet, every day."

That would jeopardize public safety, he said, in a far more compromised way than it would with the current level.

He and the city manager are encouraged by the influx of new recruits, the first class in several years.

Forty will graduate on March 29 and hit the streets in early April.

Another 40 are queued up and ready to follow by the end of the year. However, since the department will likely lose as many as 60 firefighters to retirement by the end of 2014, the net personnel gain is minimal.

"We're trying to play catch up a little bit,” according to City Manager Dohoney. "We, like other cities around the country, felt some impact from the recession."

Dohoney said he doesn't necessarily expect the city to reach authorized strength in the immediate years ahead, but believed staffing numbers will improve.

Federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants paid for the two recruit classes this year. Dohoney said he will ask for more grants, but even if they are denied, he has been authorized by Cincinnati City Council to request funding for a recruit class in 2014.

There was general recognition that brownouts need to be reduced, if not eliminated, and that staffing increases are needed.

"Otherwise we'll slide backwards again," said Chief Braun.

Inside the firehouses, the talk was about how the volume of calls for service has not diminished the way staffing has.

"We're still doing the same amount of work," one firefighter told WLWT News 5’s John London.

Paramedic training over the next nine weeks will take two more companies out of service, two days a week.

It's a daily balancing act in the fire department these days between safety and staffing.

The city manager believed overtime costs will drop as new recruits join the department, but it will take time to move them on fire trucks.

Only a few weeks from the department's 160th anniversary, budget woes still persist.

"Yes, we are spending more in overtime,” Dohoney said. "We're doing so purposely in order to help provide a safer city."

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